Teacher Farewells

With the start of the new school year, teachers are transferred in and out of the school. We lost about 7 teachers, including one who had been on a sabbatacial/alternate work gig, whom I had never evenmet.

The two I think I'll miss most are Takayama-san, our kyoto-sensei [vice principal] and Ohmichi-sensei, one of the P.E. teachers. Takayama-san was exceptionally nice, always going out of the way to try and talk with me, and over the summer, when there were no classes, took me over to his house to meet his wife and have tea. Ohmichi-sensei was a trip, teaching me bad Japanese slang [Okay-bokujo!] and pretty much acting the fool. His occasional English outbursts of "Oh my God!", "Dangerous!" and "English is easy for me" [pretty much the extent of his English] never failed to crack me up. Plus the fact for several weeks he insisted refer to him as Denzel [Washington], George [Clooney] and Morgan [Freeman]. He will be missed.